January 27 is the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Sowjets

Germany has begun fairly late in recognizing this date officially, namely in 1996, but this recognition is certainly due to German historians of the second generation who have been complicating questions about levels of guilt from perpetrators and victims to bystanders and sympathizers since the 1960s and 70s in various areas. The 1990s have led researchers to look not only at the role of various types of memory in Germany’s dealing with the Nazi past, which helped, among other things, to distinguish the disconnect between official historiography of individual behavior in Nazi Germany and the passing of family stories where grandfathers remained beloved grandfathers who could never harm anyone. This research in the 1990s also motivated historians themselves to look at their discipline’s complicity in the way they supported Nazi ideology and to some extent even gave it a theoretical foundation.
The following article shows the results of this research in the next generation, as it describes the way a company is taking stock of its willing involvement with Nazi Germany for a profit. This approach, in the opinion of the company’s spokesperson, asks any company today to be “critical about who produced what, for whom and for which purpose.”
If you want to read more, click here.